My Mother, The Monster

Her life was a snowstorm; while the rest of us relied on oxygen to breathe she could not cope without inhaling a constant supply of that damnable white powder. It slid down her nasal passages, snaked its way through her veins and made a home of her habit- gradually evicting her health, her children and, eventually, her sanity.

When my mother told me to pack my bags, I knew it was only because she had done one too many bags. With vehemence in dilated eyes she fallaciously lamented how it was my very existence that had deprived her of her role as a mother in our lives.

I long for her to take an honest look in the mirror, but these days the closest she gets to that is when her reflection stares back at her widened nostrils, the straw cut as short as the one she dealt us.

Her life has become an illusion, and I have watched her disappear.

 

Silent Strings

You cannot leave; you were never there.

You told us we were but borrowed from the Earth, and that we did not belong to you…

Nor did you belong to us.

But I felt you to be mine; through butterfly kisses and Tiny Bubbles, to broken chests that filled with smoke and breathed out the emptiness of a directionless existence…

“The Total Acceptance of What Is”, you preached, and so accept I do; of everything and everyone, to Love is all I live to do. Yet I cannot live up to my namesake, for in return Beloved I am not -although you Christened me so.

We are all fleeting.

All-fleeing.

It is all I have known. It is all I have become. And although in body you exist, your spirit has long since abandoned me.

What was has died. And with it, a part of me.

Our music has stilled.

But I will always be a part of you.

I hope one day, you Remember.

I hope by then, I have Forgotten.

Explaining Manic Depression To My Loved Ones

EXPLAINING MANIC DEPRESSION TO MY LOVED ONES:

 

Manic Depression is very difficult to live with –both to suffer from it, or to be affected by it. It also comes with a stigma, which those with Manic Depression feel forced to wear like a shame they have to conceal. Had we been afflicted by a socially acceptable illness such as diabetes, we would simply say: I have diabetes. And everyone would become sympathetic, and ask what type we have and how we are coping and if there is anything they could do to help us? But we don’t have a PHYSICAL illness. We have a MENTAL illness, so we cannot just say: I have Manic Depression. Because then people are scared of us, not sympathetic towards us.

 

So, what does Manic Depression feel like?

 

Some of the time, it feels like nothing. My emotions are relatively neutral, and I can adjust to and function in the same environment as any ‘normal’ human being could.

 

But then at other times, it isn’t so neutral. It is a little happier. I want to say a bit more when in conversation, stay out a while longer when socialising and interact more openly when in crowds.

 

Until suddenly I am a LOT happier. I don’t want to keep quiet; I garrulously speak a mile a minute and want to mingle with every single person whose path I cross, engage everyone in frivolous small talk or deeply intimate heart-to-hearts…

 

I want to go EVERYWHERE

And do ALL OF THE THINGS

all of the time!

 

Everything I do is spontaneous, and very impetuous. I make impulsive decisions, I act without inhibition…

 

And make extravagant plans for events in the future.

 

I look great. I feel great. I do great. I probably am great!!

 

I am a well of strength to all of those around me, and spread a seemingly infinite source of love and encouragement to everyone that I encounter.

 

I have the most fantastic ideas, and enough stamina to start any project that I put my mind to…

 

Which works out fantastically, because I cannot sleep at night so I have PLENTY of time to finish any and everything, right…?

 

Until….

 

Until I slowly stop wanting to do anything. At all. Anywhere. For any reason.

 

I communicate much less, and replace long nights out with endless days in, confined alone in my bed.

 

My well of love and support has run dry…

 

And it feels like I have fallen into the bottom of it.

 

Everything is dark and cramped and constricting,

 

And I am mostly alone with my own thoughts

 

But I WANT to be this way.

 

Both mind and body are destroyed from my mental fall, and don’t want to get up, nor change out of these pajamas. They’ve accepted me as their own. And all I need right now is to be accepted.

 

Maybe I eat a whole cake at once
Maybe I eat nothing at all
Maybe I shower
I probably won’t

 

All I know is, I may have had the stamina to run a marathon last week,

And I may have made well-meaning plans –

 

BUT I CAN’T FOLLOW THROUGH WITH ANY OF THAT TODAY.

 

And I might not be able to tomorrow, either.

 

In fact, I might not be able to for quite a while…

 

But eventually, I will be neutral again.

And then manic, too.

And depressed once more.

 

All that I ask… And all that we need…

 

Is that you try to understand. And if you cannot understand,

At the very least

 

LOVE US THROUGH IT ALL, ANYWAY ❤

On The Days That I Cannot Get Out Of Bed

On The Days That I Cannot Get Out Of Bed:

I’m cold inside, but my bed offers the illusion of warmth. It will not infuse my bones and my blood will remain reptilian: Jack Frost has not simply nipped at my nose. His touch has violated me, it has burrowed through my flesh and pulsed through my veins until I myself have become Ice.

On the days that I cannot get out of bed, food feels like a nemesis that my teeth are in no position to battle, my tongue too weary from words unsaid to even pretend. And so, in liquid states I ingest only -and barely -what I need to keep me alive… But I always wonder: what I am trying to stay alive for, anyway?

On the days that I cannot get out of bed, my closet remains untouched as each clean garment lays folded precisely in place -and I? I bask in the putrid glory of pyjamas that cling to my skin in a disgusting display of three-day-old sweat, their sleeves crusted with snot and my chest stained with the remnants of a meal that did not quite make it to my mouth.

On the days that I cannot get out of bed, my mouth seals itself in a strike of silence and I wonder if anyone knows how grateful they ought to be? For I haven’t cleansed myself in as long as I haven’t felt like myself. My  unwashed hair glistens as though it could provide a fast food restaurant with enough grease to operate the entire franchise, and my eyes are gummed with what the Sandman is working overtime to deliver -gifts that bring only nightmares, never dreams.

On the days that I cannot get out of bed, I wonder what it would feel like not to ever have to get up again? The blankets swathe me in their surety of safety from any external hardships, yet nothing can undo the pounding pessimism that wraps itself around my own internal being -strangling all that makes me who I am. I wonder if the inside of my coffin will be the comfortable haven my bed is not? I wonder how soon I will get there…

Lately my body has begun to fail me. It has derailed with my mind in a pitiful downward spiral that is the ever – present battle of Manic Depression -and today, I am more Depressed than Manic.
And so on this day, I cannot get out of bed.

The Perfect Partner

Most people have an expectation of what their ideal partner would be like. Usually these notions are ideals imprinted through Disney childhoods or classic novelists, through parental impressions or media propaganda. Seldom does our idea of the ideal companion come from who we are and what we want, it is usually a combination of factors with our Ultimate Truth barely making the equation.

In my case, the few essential qualities selected have started to appear less like ideal characteristics and more like intentional confinement. The average person will have an idea of what it is they are seeking, a basic list of traits from which they will not be swayed, but the more intricate items will be overlooked when love comes their way. A few crooked teeth and a different career path are gladly forgotten when the Italian artist smiles as he sweeps the Russian-loving businesswomen off her feet, and yet I seem to have such an unrealistic outlook that I have started to recognise it for what it is on a subconscious level –an excuse masquerading as a standard.

So impossible is my list that it is dubious whether such a person could exist anywhere other than in ink and imagination. It starts with a desire for a specific eye color, which I am convinced my heart can only beat for. So staunch am I in my convictions that I have yet to envision anything other than that colour, and tell myself it is because the iris is the only physical asset that remains the same when all else changes. But then it is also his profession, refusing to believe I could be compatible with those in certain industries, and placing a biased belief on all men in certain sectors -thus completely ruling them out. But I take it a step further still by believing they must be native English speakers, for so strong is my need to explore and express with another that the thought of having a barrier between complete connection is instantly unsettling. Further still, and the man I am with needs to be in touch with his emotional side as stone cold logic would not bode with my fluctuating emotional current. In fact, not just an emotional side -there needs to be damage, and more moderate than mild. Plain down fucked up could be just the ticket. In addition to this he needs just the right mix of characteristics -lacking in one of the traits I deem most imperative is an immediate dismissal, as if I myself am not made of good intentions that never manifest. Most importantly we need to connect, a bond so strong it would feel as if it the comet that struck the earth and took out an entire damned species couldn’t compete. And on top of that, he’s got to…

He’s got to not exist, because if he exists I may let him in, and if I let him in he may stay, and if he stays I may get used to him being there, and if I get used to him being there he may go, and if he goes it may hurt… And if it hurts I’ll have to heal. Again.

I’m Anxious, Not An Addict

When I twizzle a lock of golden hair around my finger until the snap of strands sound, it isn’t because I am a giddy girl in the throes of flirtation. The notion of a partner has always been more terrifying to me than it has been enticing. I am anxious, not infatuated.

When I still my body and seek shadows as my environment becomes overpopulated, it isn’t because I perceive myself as being too good for the companionship of my peers. Burrowing myself in the retreat of solitude ceases the treacherous spinning of yarns in which my mind becomes knitted. I am anxious, not arrogant.

>When I disguise my ears beneath headphones and disappear into mind and melody, it isn’t because I believe what you are saying to be worthless. Music muffles the suspicion that your words are weapons aiming to tell me that I am less than worthy… The music serves to embellish the background of a life to which I do not feel I belong. I am anxious, not inconsiderate.

When I press a beverage to my lips with alarming frequency and gulp the contents as we share a meal together, it isn’t because I’ve been in urgent need of hydration. The opportunity to occupy my hands and excuse my silence is a subconscious motivator that drowns both tongue and words. I am anxious, not thirsty.

When I consume a disturbing amount of liquor as we sit amidst a gaggle of strangers, all erupting with their own characters that mesh into the night air, it isn’t because I want to be instantaneously inebriated. The liquor only serves to dissolve the walls in which I am enveloped. I am anxious, not an alcoholic.

When my teeth rip the skin from the beds of my fingers until they drip scarlet sheets, my habit is not a statement about my past. Tearing flesh from fingers and feet means I am easing my emotions NOW, not fixating on occurrences back THEN.  I am anxious, not time locked.

When I self-medicate in my spare time until I have merged the darkness of reality with the comfort of neutrality, it isn’t because I found a moment too mundane to endure. My vices aid in alleviating an internal battle so that I am less war and more warrior. I am anxious, not an addict.

When blackened universe speckled with stars form before my eyes as panic attacks and renders my lungs redundant, it isn’t because I want a spotlight shone on me. My heart pounding faster until it unites with my throat isn’t a contrived act in a bid for your attention.  I’m anxious, not desperate.

When you think you can analyse my every action, and neatly label me with a diagnosis so as to know which box to shove me in to and find the shelf to hide me on, know that I am more than my panic attacks and mental disturbances, more than my emotional dysregulation and paranoid withdrawal. I am anxious, not a statistic.

My reactions to this world should not warrant me a stranger riddled with a disease, to be avoided, to be ignored, to be viewed as lesser than and unfit for the reality of this life. I am anxious, not incompetent.

I am anxious, not ill.

I am ANXIOUS, not UNLOVABLE .

Dear Kat: What Life Is Like Now That You Are Gone

Dear Kat: What Life Is Like Now That You Are Gone

It’s absurd how often I think about you now that you are gone; every casual conversation we ever had an exchange of words I did not realise would cement themselves in the place you no longer are.

Your passing apprised me with the fragility of human existence, and the profound impact interactions could have well after their moment had ceased to be anything more than recollections.

A million words are incoherently strewn in my brain, wishing to string themselves together and sound out like notes to your ears, to fill you with the Love that is owed to all who live -not only to those who have left us behind. I view the warmth of affection as a blanket of selfishness I swaddled myself in, and feel myself imploding with the knowledge that I can no longer infuse you with emotions.

If our true human connections were to be viewed as a single piece of jewelry, then your place around my wrist would have been a sparkling gem I did not pay attention to until your casing was without stone. Now all I see is the empty space in which nothing will ever fit as appropriately, a vacant gap as dull as the darkness that blinded you and a thousand words remain unspoken…
-except the air hears them all: the unoccupied car seat as I barrel along the highway with a melody that chokes of your memory, the way I envision you in my room when all I can think about is how there is no elegant way to describe death, nor the loss of the companions you learn to love along the way and my God I hope you know I loved you…

And thank you. The little pieces of yourself that you have left behind are enough to help feel closer to you whenever there is a lacking; the way you laid yourself out was a patchwork manner in which we could piece you together when we no longer knew where to look for you. With the haze of hurt slowly subsiding, and the reality of a life without you settling in your words become clearer, your truth becomes louder…

Yet still it is as if every memory I access ties itself to you, and of a multitude of neural fragments yours stab the sharpest until you are a migraine I do not want to be rid of. It would be me who fell to my knees now, if only I could see you! Neither of us recognised the importance of your existence when your lungs still took air, in death you embody all that it means to have taken things for granted. You were an inspiration in the most subtle way, that our very conversations encouraged entire poetic pieces without me ever attributing the significance to who you were to me. In hindsight, my writings have rarely ever taken shape without tragedy. How ironic then, that we find ourselves here. Do I find you here?

Too many of the things I love have chords of you hidden in the tune, speaking through the lyrics and so I no longer know how to listen without hearing you. Yet lately Kat, it seems evermore to me that this life is beautiful: it feels as though I have gone through chrysalis to emerge with wings that you will never see in flight, and I only wonder how bright your wings would have been had you envisioned the darkness as encasing a beginning rather than the cocoon of a curse. Oh, my Skittles! Sometimes I taste the rainbow, and only hope that you have found the pot of gold at The End… ♥

Guilt: How Your Noose Strangled My Neck

It is not my fault that you are gone. It IS my fault for not realising that you were not going to stay.

It Is My Fault for overlooking your emotional decline, as if my helplessness regarding your hopelessness was a validation for the way in which I handled your statement of depression. I, always so abundant in advice for those I care about, found when your tongue stalled mine stilled. In your silence there was a hunger for the words that I did not have.

It Is My Fault for the immoralities in which I have excessively indulged, for the vices that we would unite over and the manner in which they obliterated the memories of your every profession. In your absence my thoughts have sobered, and I have been left to reflect upon what I have now come to know was truly your confession.

It Is My Fault for allowing the anxiety that ticks in my head like the hands of a clock to convince me there was no time for a farewell, because there would always be time for another hello. The uncharacteristic keenness you displayed should have served as an alarm, yet my apprehension was the only thing I allowed myself to pay heed to… The loss of you has detonated with more force than any fear ever could have.

It Is My Fault for blithely accepting your response to my query; you were a puzzle I was too ashamed to admit I could not solve. What you presented was a perfectly coloured side of a Rubik’s Cube, and although I could sense the angles you did not display were a mangled mess aching to be resolved I did not know how to align the rest of you without disrupting the best of you.

It Is Not My Fault that you are gone, but It Is My Fault for not recognising that you weren’t going to stay. As you journeyed to your final destination, you left a trail of breadcrumbs in your wake –and now, I’m choking on them.

Skittles Taste Like Suicide

“My death will be the result of suicide.” Neither the weather nor my emotional state were particularly gloomy when this thought calmly made itself known to me last summer. It should have shocked me to my core, and yet it felt more like acknowledging the unavoidable than encountering the absurd. I was not enduring a bout of depression and my life circumstances weren’t troublesome, so this thought should not have had any grounds… And yet it did, and it does.

It’s an odd feeling, knowing that you have an inconsistent and untrustworthy emotional state. During some stages you find yourself a blissful, euphoric individual that is grateful for every scent, every sight, every situation, and at others you’re nothing but an empty void of an entity, wondering how the changing of seasons can be so colourful yet you yourself are nothing more than ebony stains and inky errors?

To those who haven’t dealt with emotional dysregulation, the very idea of suicide is seen as a selfish act; as if thinking a person should exist simply so that you do not suffer their loss isn’t selfish in itself. They cannot comprehend the severity of sadness, and think that “time will heal” and “you will get over this” are adequate pieces of advice. And perhaps yes, time will heal that particular wound and yes, that obstacle will be overcome but in the case of truly emotional time bombs it runs deeper than a surface problem –it’s a lifelong affliction that comfortably settles in the recesses of your mind with one definite promise: I WILL EMERGE AGAIN!

A scenario may be surmounted, but as life advances so too do emotions. At what point does a person ailed by recurring bouts of depression decide that the happiness they will acquaint themselves with once more is no longer sufficient to excuse the misery they are stifled by periodically? If you absolutely know that, even with medication to attempt adjusting your dysfunctional chemical imbalance, there will be another time when melancholy is the attire that you are donned in then how can you be blamed for deciding you no longer wish for the burden of providing the mannequin for the garb?

And so the thought of my demise did not frighten me that day, but rather felt like a truth I calmly accepted. Although I am certain at this very moment that I am enjoying the roller coaster of a life that I lead and have absolutely no intention of surrendering my existence at my own hands, I cannot guarantee the self that will succumb to a chemical decline will see fit to continue this charade in the future. If you do not experience the extremities of the highs and the lows of life, the inability to truly empathise will cause this concept to be viewed as an inexcusable act to you –and yet those who know, who truly KNOW, that sometimes time and tide are not enough to compensate for the ever-swinging emotional pendulum will not be plagued by the misguided fantasy of “if only”, for they will know that even if only the deceased had persisted, so too would the depression. Eventually, and inevitably, it always comes back.

May your atoms disperse and vibrate on a more positive frequency, my darling Skittles.

Ask Me Why I’m An Alcoholic

I have cleansed the taste if you from my tongue. Not with the saliva of another, no -I have washed it with the staunch taste of liquor; as strong as our passion, as bitter as our parting.

It isn’t long before I am seeing double, the way I did after each occasion that your fists acquainted themselves with my skull. Even more swiftly and I black out, not unlike the times your fingers became tendrils seeking my throat as the basis of their support, or the way my eyelid took on an inky hue every time someone that wasn’t you called me “pretty”, and you called me “whore”.

Nowadays, I am more familiar with the names of Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker and Jose freakin’ Cuervo than I will ever be with the multitude of men who attempt to press themselves against me at night, seeing my vacant eyes as an invitation between my thighs.

I am no whore, for were I to have invited multiple men inside of me simultaneously as you so desperately desired, or allowed you to witness numerous men abusing my body until I was as empty as the bottles I now frequently guzzle you may never have let me go when my head prevailed over the idiocy of my heart. The revolt ripples through me and I try sterilise the sin with a tot of tequila – or, you know, a bottle of gin.

But when I awake on a park bench in the early hours with bare recollections of the evening before, yet the anguish you inflicted still screams prominently in the front of my mind akin to the headaches that have made themselves a home in my cranium -with my tongue as their welcome mat- it’s as clear as the liquid I love that I can never escape the horror that your existence embodies. I can never flee the pain you inflicted, and the harsh reality grounds me with as much force as your fists ever did.

And in that moment of clarity I know I can acknowledge the hurt and be hindered, or accept the pain and proceed.

I feel this deserves a toast.

But instead, I put the bottle down… and pick myself up.